#TechTipThursday: Rubrics and Assignment Feedback

Canvas has many helpful features when it comes to providing student feedback on assignments, along with the use of rubrics built in to an assignment’s page. This guides both the students in developing their assignment submissions, as well as the instructors in grading those submissions.

Rubrics in Canvas

To see rubrics in Canvas, either the student or the instructor simply has to click on an assignment’s title from whatever page it is accessible from; this can include the ‘modules’ tab, ‘assignments’ tab, or ‘grades’ tab within a Canvas course. Once you are viewing an assignment’s page, if a rubric has been included it will be directly below the assignment description.

This is the end of the student’s ability to interact with rubrics on Canvas. If the instructor has not created a rubric for an assignment in Canvas, none will appear.

For instructors, to create or edit a rubric on a Canvas assignment he simply has to go to the assignment’s page (not the ‘edit assignment’ page). Under the assignment title and description will be the rubric if one exists, which can be edited using the pencil in the upper right hand corner of the rubric table. Otherwise, he can select the ‘+ Rubric’ button to create a canvas rubric for the assignment.

When creating/editing a Canvas rubric, there are many options available, including adding and editing the title of criteria, adding descriptions for ratings, and altering the point value of criteria. There are also numerous checkboxes below the rubric table itself allowing the instructor to select the preferences to write freeform comments, use the rubric for assignment grading, hide the assessment score results, and more.

Assignment Feedback in Canvas

When students submit assignments in formats such as word documents in Canvas, instructors have the ability to annotate and comment on these submissions which leaves feedback students are able to see when grades are made available to them. When a student is notified that an assignment submission has been graded, he can click on the assignment from either the ‘assignments’ tab or ‘grades’ tab and then select ‘view feedback’.

Selecting this will open a preview of the document and show instructor feedback on the right side of the document.

For instructors, when in the assignment page one can select ‘SpeedGrader’ to open the submissions viewer and leave feedback and annotations on student submissions. Below is a visual example of what the SpeedGrader screen will appear like and the options available on it.